Angel-hair Pasta with Thai Spiced Prawns

Angel-hair pasta (capellini) is, as the name suggests, the very finest shreds of pasta, now available in larger supermarkets. Large prawns also come in packs, peeled with the tails intact: the very large varieties come in eight per pack, the smaller ones in 12 per pack. Either way you need one pack per person as a main course.

The recipe is spicy, pungent and just the thing to make use of some previously prepared Thai Red Curry Paste.

Method

A couple of hours before you intend to serve the pasta, place the Thai Red Curry Paste in a bowl, add the prawns and toss them around so that they get a good coating of sauce. Now cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours for the prawns to soak up the flavours.

When you're ready to start cooking, first heat up 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan and gently cook the garlic for 1 or 2 minutes or until it's pale gold, then add the chopped tomatoes, lime zest and juice and wine and keeping the heat high, let the sauce bubble and reduce for about 8 minutes.

After that add the prawns and paste to the sauce and when it's bubbling again, turn the heat down and let it cook gently for another 3 minutes or until it has reduced and thickened. Then put a lid on the pan and keep the sauce warm while you deal with the pasta.

For this you need to make sure that you have two serving plates warming, then bring a large saucepan of salted water up to a fast boil. Push the pasta down into the boiling water and immediately time it for 3 minutes only.

As soon as the 3 minutes are up, spoon the pasta (using a spoon and fork, or a proper pasta server) directly on to the plates. Don't worry about the wetness as this will soon evaporate: if you drain this pasta in the normal way, because it's so fine it sticks together and becomes unmanageable.

Now quickly spoon the sauce and prawns over the pasta, sprinkle on the coriander, add the lime slices and serve presto pronto!